WBA/WBO lightweight champ Vasiliy Lomachenko is fighting this Friday and, normally, it would never be a good idea for any fighter to overlook his upcoming opponent while pondering future career moves.
But the Ukraine?s favorite son is facing game, moderately talented, but woefully overmatched Anthony Crolla of the UK in an 80-to-1 squash. Lomachenko could probably roll around a flat screen on a cart during the fight, playing Fortnite on X-Box while creating a Spotify music playlist?and still pitch a shutout.
?What to do next? talk is okay this one time.
The problem is that Lomachenko pretty much has nothing to do next.
The only real name worth talking about in his weight range is junior lightweight titlist Gervonta Davis, who has the raw physical ability to give Lomachenko some issues, but also an alliance with Al Haymon and Mayweather Promotions that makes putting a fight together a very tough proposition.
Lomachenko seems to welcome the challenge, even going so far as to offer fighting for free.
?Maybe after 135 I go down to 130 one more time and try to organize a fight with Gervonta Davis,? Lomachenko recently told members of the media.
?I can fight with him for free. I don?t need the money. I came for my goal ? but [Davis] never stepped in the ring for free. Never.?
Lomachenko?s promoter Bob Arum, on the other hand, is uncharacteristically NOT dangling a media-enticing carrot before his fighter?s less than enthralling title defense on ESPN.
?Forget Gervonta Davis; he is in a different weight class,? Arum told esnews. ?We?re not going over and talking to Haymon and getting tied up. We don?t need Gervonta Davis. If he comes to us and says we?ll fight Lomachenko at x amount. Well, okay, we?d listen. But otherwise, I?m not chasing Gervonta Davis.?
But, like it or not, maybe Lomachenko DOES need Davis.
Beating up on a series of no-hopers is unbecoming of a talent like Lomachenko. This Crolla fight, which is a WBA mandatory challenge being played off as something forced on the two-time Olympic gold medalist or, as Arum put it ?shoved up our asses,? can?t become a trend. If Team Lomachenko can?t rustle up some talent who, at least on paper, represent a challenge for their guy, fan patience will wear thin. Lomachenko will go from being ?must-see TV? to someone whose highlight package is checked out the following day.
With a barren 135 lb. landscape around him and a justified reluctance to jump up to a much-too-heavy junior welterweight division, Lomachenko has nobody who can offer him a real fight?except, maybe, Gervonta Davis.
The business politics of boxing, though, make Lomachenko-Davis even less likely to happen than other cockblocked mega-fights like Errol Spence-Terence Crawford and Anthony Joshua-Deontay Wilder.
Those looking for something to test the prodigious gifts of Vasiliy will come up with the same lame answers his own people are tossing out to the public. Maybe IBF titlist Richard Commey. Maybe WBC junior lightweight champ Miguel Berchelt.
Of course, there?s always Mikey Garcia, whose failed bid to beat welterweight champ Errol Spence, could send him back down to lightweight. But, then again, Garcia, like Davis, is a fighter from the other side of the boxing street, estranged from Arum through his alliance with adviser Al Haymon and from his ugly split with Arum?s Top Rank Promotions a few years back.
Fellow Top Rank fighter, 21-year-old Teofimo Lopez is a unique talent with tremendous charisma who may, eventually, be the one to retire the Ukrainian three-division world champ. But that one?s ?down the road? as Arum says and, knowing Arum, that road will be needlessly long.
So, that takes us back to where we started. Lomachenko?s going to crush Crolla this Friday and, after that, there?s nobody but the glimmer of a shiny Gervonta Davis in the distance.
